Displays built from mechanical light modulators are an attractive alternative to displays based on liquid crystal technology. Mechanical light modulators are fast enough to display video content with good viewing angles and with a wide range of color and grey scale. Mechanical light modulators have been successful in projection display applications. Backlit displays using mechanical light modulators have not yet demonstrated sufficiently attractive combinations of brightness and low power. When operated in transmissive mode many mechanical light modulators, with aperture ratios in the range of 10 and 20%, are only capable of delivering 10 to 20% of available light from the backlight to the viewer for the production of an image. Combining the mechanical apertures with color filters reduces the optical efficiency to about 5%, i.e., no better than the efficiencies available in current color liquid crystal displays. There is a need for a low-powered display having increased luminous efficiency.